Rebirth

“Take this,” he said, pulling off his own parka.

“No, I can’t,” she said, but when he tossed it to her she caught it.

And because he couldn’t stand to watch her put on the coat that was still warm from his body, he stalked past her and into the building, refusing to turn around. “It’ll just slow me down anyway.”

33

IT WAS TAKING TOO LONG.

Cass had gone back into the truck like Dor ordered her. Smoke’s chills had subsided; her coat seemed to be keeping him warm. Ruthie sat cross-legged at his side, watching him with a serious expression on her face. Cass stared out the back of the truck; the sky was lightening at the horizon, but no one had come or gone from the building. Nearby, the guard’s unconscious body lay in a landscaping bed behind a hedge of dead oleanders.

For the first time in many months, Cass wished for a watch. It seemed like it had been half an hour, but what if it had only been a few minutes? Dor’s plan had been simple enough; he was going to take the first guard or attendant he could find, threaten them into cooperation, and demand to be taken to Sammi. The rooms in the dorm where she and Dor had spent the night were unlocked. But would they lock the girls in here, to deter them from trying to escape?

But what if Sammi wasn’t here? What if they’d already taken her for… Cass shuddered, not wanting to think about the procedure, the violation of a body, in its own way just as horrific as what had nearly been done to her earlier tonight. Sammi was still a child; Cass had not been a child for decades.

If they had taken Sammi to the Tapp Clinic, maybe she was there on the upper floors, resting, recuperating, being tested. Or maybe she was here, but Dor couldn’t find her; maybe he was going from room to room, taking greater and greater risks.

Cass thought about driving away, leaving Dor here to fend for himself. It was the second time in their journey that she had considered abandoning him. The keys were in the ignition. She knew the way across campus to the incomplete section of wall, and she could easily drive out and be on the road in minutes. Sure, they might come after her; once they discovered the dead men in the clinic basement, Smoke’s empty cot. There could be a bounty on her head as there had been on his. But with a head start, she could be back up to the Box by the time anyone had a chance to catch up. Suddenly all the reasons not to go back didn’t seem so insurmountable. There was gas in the truck, she was armed, she wouldn’t stop until she saw the welcoming lights along the chain-link fence. Even if they sent a team, a dozen Rebuilders, Dor’s people would defeat them handily.

Dor’s people. Dor.

She couldn’t just leave him here. He would never have left her behind.

She looked at Ruthie, so serious, so concerned. “Babygirl, let’s get Smoke into the front of the truck, where it’s nicer,” she said. “Then you can take good care of him for a few minutes while I go help Dor. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

Ruthie nodded gravely and placed her hand on Smoke’s arm, as though she was comforting him.

It was hard work, half carrying, half dragging Smoke off the bed of the truck, and up into the cab, Ruthie continuing to want to touch him the whole way. He woke, moaning, from the pain, and for a few moments he seemed to fight her, as though he didn’t recognize her. But by the time she got him to the open passenger door he had stopped struggling and looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. “You look…like her,” he muttered, and when she gathered all her strength and tried to lift him onto the running board, up into the cab, he sighed and dragged himself inside, collapsing onto the seat.

Ruthie crawled up beside him and knelt on the floor, resuming her vigil. Cass brushed a kiss on her cheek and had started to close the passenger door, when Ruthie gave her a small smile.

“I’ll help him, Mama.”

34

WHEN SAMMI WOKE AND SAW THE FAINTEST pink of dawn through the window, it took her a moment to remember where she was and how she came to be there.

And then it took only one more moment for Sammi to come to a decision.

Last night she’d been numb. Shocked. Too much had happened. The truth kept getting revealed a little at a time, all through the terrible day, as the Rebuilders’ true nature slowly came into focus. They were evil, even the ones who didn’t carry guns or set fires. Some things were even worse than just killing people. They wiped out everyone you cared about and then they led you away, and expected you to just go along with them and do their things. They pretended this place was normal, pretended this was like some big happy town-but behind closed doors all kinds of horrors were waiting. They made girls pregnant-Sammi didn’t even want to think about how-and kept them in this place, and who knew what came after that? It was sure to be awful, and now that Sammi had finally gotten some rest, she suddenly knew that she wasn’t going to accept this fate without a fight.

All the pieces were in place-she was a girl whose fears had been burned away by one loss after another, in a place where they counted on fear to keep people down-so she wasn’t worried about how this journey would end, exactly. She would live or she would die, and she didn’t much care which.

But the Rebuilders needed to know that they couldn’t just throw people away like they didn’t matter. That people were more than nothing. Her mother’s life had ended with the soundless arc of a sharpened blade, no more than a seeping pool of blood on the earth. Jed lost his life in the blink of an eye, as did his brothers. And Mrs. Levenson, and countless others, and the Rebuilders would just go on killing and killing until people stood up to them, and Sammi figured she might as well be one of the ones who fought.

So when the faint pink appeared in the sky outside their narrow window, Sammi pushed back her blankets and put her feet on the cold floor. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dawn and squatted over the big plastic bowl.

“It gets easier.”

Roan’s voice startled her and Sammi saw that she was sitting up in bed, hugging herself. “What does?”

“Peeing like that. I refused to do it the first month I was here. I thought I could out-stubborn them, you know? But the thing is, when you’re pregnant it’s a lot harder to hold it. Now? I pee like three times a night.”

Sammi stared at her silhouette in the darkened room. “How pregnant are you?”

Roan laughed, somehow managing to make it sound sad. “You don’t ask someone how pregnant they are. You say, how far along are you?”

“Oh.”

“They say I’m six weeks. I guess they’d know.”

Sammi wasn’t sure how to say what came next. “Uh…how did you, I mean, you weren’t pregnant when you got here…were you?”

Roan frowned. “Didn’t Mrs. Henderson tell you?”

“Tell me what? I mean, she hardly said anything to me. I got here in the middle of the night and I think she just wanted to go to bed. She acted all pissed off that she had to take care of me.”

“God, what a bitch,” Roan sighed. “Okay, so you might as well hear it from me, right? You’re here to breed. They’re going to impregnate you with outlier sperm so you can have an immune baby. Then when the baby comes they take it. They give it to one of the higher-up families to raise, and when they get the new outlier neighborhood finished, all the kids are going to grow up over there.” Roan’s voice was dull, as though the desperation of her situation had sucked the life from her.

Sammi’s throat felt dry as Roan’s words rang in her mind.

Breed. Impregnate. Immune baby…they take it.

“Wait, you don’t get to, you know, take care of it? Yourself?”

Roan laughed, a short, bitter sound that disappeared into silence. “We’re just the baby factory,” she said softly. “At least we don’t have to work. I mean, they feed us pretty well, it’s safe here…and they do it in vitro, you know? I